Clinical characterization of patients with endocarditis

Background: infective endocarditis is a relatively infrequent disease, which is often difficult to diagnose and has a high mortality.Objective: to characterize from a clinical viewpoint the patients with endocarditis admitted to the services of internal medicine and cardiology of the "Dr. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna" Hospital of Las Tunas, from January 2012 to December 2015.Methods: an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out with 22 patients with a diagnosis of infective endocarditis, attended to at the aforementioned institution and during the period herein declared. To gather the information secondary sources were used by reviewing the medical records.Results: there was a prevalence of patients with infective endocarditis belonging to the 41 to 50 age group for 27,3 % of the cases, as well as the male sex with 68,1 %. The personal pathological history mostly manifested was ischemic cardiopathy in 36,4 %. Fever represented 90 % within the clinical manifestations. Infective endocarditis was diagnosed at the time of admission to 14 patients, 63,6 % out of the total. In 8 patients (36,4 %) there was no coincidence between the presumptive diagnosis and the definitive one. Valvular vegetations predominated in the echocardiogram in 40,9 % and Staphylococcus aureus was isolated in 40,9 % of the cases. Conclusions: the patients with infective endocarditis were characterized, presenting fever as the clinical manifestation in almost the entire sample. In more than half of the cases, the presumptive diagnosis on admission coincided with the definitive diagnosis.